Deep Sea, Coastal, and Great Lakes Water Transportation (U.S.) — NAICS 48311

A rollup investor's primer for a general audience — relevant to both public-market and private investors. This level synthesizes four child industries; its distinctive value is the contrast across them. Federal figures are reported facts with citations; forward-looking statements are worded as judgments. NAICS = North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard code for grouping businesses by activity.

1. Overview

NAICS 48311 is the federal industry that gathers together the businesses operating large ships on oceans and the Great Lakes — the seagoing (and lake-going) end of water transportation, as opposed to river-and-canal barge traffic, which sits in a separate group (NAICS 4832). In one sentence: this is the deep-water and Great Lakes fleet that moves both cargo and people, on both international and domestic routes.[4]

Those two distinctions — freight versus passenger, and international versus domestic — are the whole map. They define the four child industries, and they are the reason a single "shipping" label is misleading: the four children are genuinely different businesses, with different owners, different economics, different regulators, and completely different ways in for an investor. The cleanest way to hold them in mind is a 2×2 grid:

For scale, the whole level books roughly $43.95 billion in U.S. receipts across about 742 firms, 1,098 establishments, and 41,670 paid employees[1][2] — but that figure is a small, distorted window onto a far larger flow of value (Section 3). Water carries roughly 80% of world trade by volume,[5] and the global cruise and container businesses this level touches are worth many times its U.S. receipts.

The single most important takeaway for an investor is that "how to invest" is not one answer — it flips completely across the four children. Ocean cruise (483112) offers the deepest, cleanest public-equity access in the whole level. International freight (483111) is a thin, cyclical set of tanker and bulk stocks. Domestic freight (483113) is a mostly-private, Jones Act-protected franchise with one large listed name. Domestic passenger (483114) has no listed pure-play at all, because its biggest carriers are governments. The sections below lead with that contrast and then treat the level as a whole.

2. What's inside — the four children and how they differ

The contrast table below is the core of this rollup. Shares of the level are computed from the federal figures in Section 3 (receipts are 2022 Economic Census; employment is 2023 County Business Patterns, so the two share columns are drawn from different years and are directional, not identical-vintage).[1][2]

Five contrasts do most of the analytical work:

• Revenue leader ≠ employment leader. Ocean cruise (483112) is the biggest by revenue (~53%) but the domestic Jones Act freight fleet (483113) is the biggest by U.S. jobs (~43%). Cruise books huge revenue against a small U.S. shore-staff footprint (its crews and ships are offshore/foreign-flag), while the Jones Act fleet employs many well-paid U.S. merchant mariners per dollar of revenue. Illustratively, receipts per U.S. employee run on the order of $1.5–1.7 million in the two deep-sea children versus roughly $560,000 (coastal freight) and $280,000 (coastal passenger) — a direct read on how much of each business's labor is counted in the United States.[1][2]

• Cabotage law splits the grid top-from-bottom. The two domestic children (483113, 483114) are protected franchises: the Jones Act (freight) and the Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA, passenger) reserve travel between two U.S. points for U.S.-built, U.S.-crewed, U.S.-flagged ships.[6][7] The two international children (483111, 483112) are the opposite — dominated by foreign-flag vessels and foreign-incorporated parents. So the same word "shipping" describes both a sheltered domestic niche and a globally competitive open trade.

• Concentration is wildly uneven (Section 8). Ocean cruise is one of the most concentrated industries in the U.S. economy; deep sea and Great Lakes freight are fragmented or oligopolistic only lane-by-lane. The level's blended concentration number therefore hides more than it reveals.

• Ownership flips from public to private to governmental. Public equity clusters in cruise; private families and private equity dominate domestic freight; governments (state ferry systems) carry most domestic passengers and issue no stock at all.

• Matson is the connective tissue. One company, Matson, straddles 483111 (its international/China-expedited container lane) and 483113 (its protected Hawaii/Alaska/Guam Jones Act franchise) — a reminder that the codes classify establishments and revenue, not whole companies.[11]

3. How big it is (this level's rollup figures)

The following are the U.S. Census / Small Business Administration (SBA) ground-truth figures for NAICS 48311. Receipts and concentration are 2022 Economic Census; employment, establishments and payroll are 2023 County Business Patterns (CBP).

(CR4 = share of receipts held by the four largest firms; HHI = a standard concentration index; SBA = U.S. Small Business Administration.)

How the children add up — and where they don't. A useful cross-check: the four children's 2023 establishments, employees and payroll sum exactly to the level totals (333 + 85 + 483 + 197 = 1,098 establishments; 6,574 + 14,045 + 17,775 + 3,276 = 41,670 employees), and their 2022 receipts sum to within rounding (~$43.94B vs. $43.95B).[1][2] But the firm counts do not add up — the children list 227 + 72 + 334 + 120 = 753 firms, more than the level's 742 — because a company that operates in more than one child industry (Matson is the obvious case) is counted once at the level but appears in each child it touches. Read the level firm count as the number of distinct companies, not the sum of the parts.

Two structural facts jump out. First, average U.S. payroll is high — roughly $117,000 per employee across the level[1] — because these are unionized, licensed merchant mariners and skilled shore staff, not low-wage labor (the domestic-passenger ferry child pulls the average down, at ~$80,000). Second, the biggest revenue child is not the biggest employment child, for the reasons in Section 2.

The undercount caveat — read this before trusting $43.95 billion. This figure measures only the U.S. employer establishments classified in 48311, and it understates the economic weight of ocean and Great Lakes transportation serving America in four compounding ways:

• Foreign carriers book their U.S. trade abroad. The lines that move most U.S. containerized imports and exports (Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, COSCO) are foreign companies whose revenue is not captured here.[10]
• U.S.-listed owners are structured offshore. The listed tanker, bulk, gas-carrier and cruise companies run their vessels through foreign-flag subsidiaries and foreign crews; most of their multi-billion-dollar revenues and their ships sit outside these U.S. counts. Carnival Corporation alone booked $26.6 billion in fiscal 2025 — more than half the entire U.S. rollup — yet only its U.S. operating footprint lands in the Census figure.[12]
• Governments are excluded entirely. In the domestic-passenger child, the largest carriers of people are public ferry authorities. A separate federal survey (the Bureau of Transportation Statistics' National Census of Ferry Operators) counted roughly 105.8 million ferry passengers[14] — a function that dwarfs the $925 million of private ferry receipts but is invisible to business statistics.
• CBP misses the small end. County Business Patterns excludes nonemployer firms, the self-employed and small owner/charter entities.[1]

So $43.95 billion is best read as the U.S. corporate-and-operating footprint of a set of businesses whose real economic weight — global freight flows, global cruise revenue, and public ferry ridership — is many times larger. The federal file reports no fleet size, vessel utilization, freight or fare rates, fuel cost, cargo/passenger volume, or profit; where those appear below they come from the cited industry sources, not the Census file.

4. Investable universe — where value concentrates across the children

The single most important structural fact for an investor: public-market value in this level is concentrated in ocean cruise (483112), which is also the largest child by revenue. Everywhere else, listed access is thin, partial, or absent, and the real ownership is private, foreign, or governmental. Tickers and scale figures below are reserved to this section and Section 10; they are approximate and move with the market.

Where the public money actually is — ocean cruise (483112). This is the deepest listed pool in the level: Carnival (NYSE: CCL/CUK), Royal Caribbean (NYSE: RCL) and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NYSE: NCLH) are the three global majors, joined by Viking (NYSE: VIK) and niche expeditioner Lindblad (Nasdaq: LIND), with small captive exposure via Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Europe's TUI.[12][13] The largest independent operator, MSC Cruises, is family-owned (the Aponte family) and does not list.[12] These are cyclical, heavily indebted, capital-intensive equities — not stable income holdings.

Thin and cyclical — international freight (483111). Listed access skews to tanker and bulk cyclicals whose ships are foreign-flagged: crude/product tankers (International Seaways INSW, Scorpio Tankers STNG, Frontline FRO), dry bulk (Star Bulk SBLK, Genco GNK), gas carriers (Dorian LPG), and containership lessors (Global Ship Lease GSL).[10] The global container liners themselves (Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, ZIM) are mostly foreign-listed. A marine/shipping exchange-traded fund (ETF, e.g. SEA) offers broad passive exposure. Note: Kirby (KEX) is frequently mis-grouped here but is an inland/coastal tank-barge operator, not deep sea.

One large listed name, then private — domestic freight (483113). The Jones Act fleet has shed public operators (from eight in 2008 to essentially two).[9] Matson (NYSE: MATX) is the only large, direct, U.S.-listed play — a protected Pacific liner with a steadier dividend than the cyclicals; Kirby (NYSE: KEX) offers partial coastal tank-barge exposure inside a mostly-inland story; Canada-listed Algoma Central (TSX: ALC) is the cleanest Great Lakes proxy (technically outside U.S. NAICS).[11][13] The marquee names — Crowley, Saltchuk/TOTE (which took Overseas Shipholding Group private in 2024), Pasha, Interlake — are private/family-held.[18]

No pure-play — domestic passenger (483114). There is no U.S.-listed pure-play. Listed exposure is only a sliver embedded in the cruise names (NCLH's Hawaii-only Pride of America; Viking's and Lindblad's U.S. coastal/Great Lakes itineraries).[13] The biggest carriers are governments (Washington State Ferries, Staten Island Ferry, the Alaska Marine Highway); the largest U.S.-flag domestic cruise operator, American Cruise Lines, is private.[14]

The through-line: value concentrates where the customer is discretionary and global (cruise) or where an asset is scarce and protected (Jones Act tonnage). It thins out wherever the buyer is a government or the operator is a private family.

5. How the money works

The four children share a DNA — capital-intensive businesses that own or finance long-lived, expensive vessels and earn a spread over the cost of running them — but the earnings engine differs by child, and the yardsticks differ with it.

• International freight (483111): charter rates and asset trading. Owners earn more per ship-day than it costs to run the ship, and buy and sell vessels across a violent cycle. The universal metric is Time Charter Equivalent (TCE) — daily earnings net of voyage costs (fuel, port charges) — so a spot voyage compares to a fixed charter.[10] Ships are highly leveraged; the resale (and scrap) value of the hull matters to total return as much as freight income. Rates can swing 70–90% peak-to-trough.

• Ocean cruise (483112): yield per berth. A cruise line is a capital-intensive hospitality business whose "real estate" floats. The engine is the gap between net yield (net revenue per available berth-day — the industry's version of a hotel's revenue-per-room) and net cruise cost per berth-day, multiplied across a debt-financed fleet.[12] Two structural quirks: passengers pre-pay months ahead (a large, float-like source of working capital), and the foreign-domicile tax structure has historically let the majors pay near-zero corporate income tax. A big new ship costs $1–2 billion, financed with government-backed export credit.

• Domestic freight (483113): utilization × rate on scarce, protected assets. Revenue comes from freight contracts, time charters and contracts of affreightment on lanes foreign ships cannot serve. The Jones Act requirement that ships be U.S.-built — at several times world prices — is both a burden and a moat: it deters entrants and props up the resale value of existing tonnage. Vessels work 30–50 years; the scarcity of compliant hulls, not marketing, is the real asset.[8]

• Domestic passenger (483114): farebox and load factor. Public ferry systems chase cost recovery, not profit — the key metric is the farebox recovery ratio (share of operating cost covered by fares, the rest by subsidy). Private ferry and small-cruise operators earn on fares, vehicle charges, charters and onboard spend against a heavy fixed cost base; the swing variables are load factor and seasonality.[14]

Across all four, the common analytical discipline is to reconcile headline EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) back to operating cash flow after recurring maintenance capital spending and drydock — fleet renewal is a real, ongoing cash need that headline earnings hide — and to judge names on normalized, through-cycle cash flow rather than a single strong quarter or fare season.

6. Demand drivers

The children respond to different demand engines, which is why they rarely peak together:

• Global trade and ton-miles drive international freight (483111). Demand for ships is measured in ton-miles (cargo × distance), so longer routes soak up capacity: rerouting around Africa in 2024 pushed ton-miles up ~6%, tightening effective supply.[5] Commodity cycles (crude, refined products, iron ore, coal, grain, LNG/LPG) and U.S. import/export flows do the rest.
• Discretionary travel and demographics drive ocean cruise (483112): a record 37.2 million passengers sailed globally in 2025, the customer base is broadening and getting younger, and near-term supply is capped by shipyard throughput — which keeps pricing disciplined when demand holds.[15]
• Non-contiguous economies and commodity cycles drive domestic freight (483113): Hawaii, Alaska, Guam and Puerto Rico import nearly everything by sea; coastal tankers track refinery runs and U.S. product exports (tight into 2026); Great Lakes bulk tracks Midwest steel and construction (soft in 2025 as steel weakened).[21]
• Essential ridership plus a tourism upcycle drive domestic passenger (483114): island and commuter ferry demand is steady and price-inelastic, while Great Lakes and small-ship coastal cruising is a genuine growth story, backed by rising federal ferry grants.[14]

The shared driver, and the shared risk, is the fleet supply side: in every child, demand only sets prices relative to how many ships exist and how fast new ones arrive. A demand boom met by a wave of newbuilds still crushes returns.

7. Regulation

This is one of the most heavily regulated corners of the economy, in three overlapping layers, and the specific rules differ sharply across the grid.

• Cabotage law is the defining regulation for the domestic children. The Jones Act (Merchant Marine Act of 1920) reserves domestic cargo for U.S.-built, -flagged, -owned and -crewed ships (483113); the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886 (PVSA) does the same for domestic passengers (483114). Both create protected franchises and both are periodic political targets — the moat is the thesis for incumbents, which cuts both ways.[6][7]
• U.S. commercial oversight differs by child. International liner freight (483111) answers to the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC), whose powers over unreasonable fees and carrier conduct were expanded by the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022.[16] Cruise (483112) leans on the Section 883 tax exemption for foreign-operated ships and on health oversight (the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program). A repeal or narrowing of Section 883 is a live policy risk that would raise the cruise majors' near-zero effective tax rates.
• International and environmental rules bind the whole level. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) sets global safety (SOLAS) and pollution (MARPOL) standards, and its tightening carbon rules (EEXI/CII ratings; a 2050 net-zero target) are the defining forward-looking cost driver for every child.[5] In U.S. waters the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) inspects and certifies vessels and mariners, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — via the North American Emission Control Area and the Vessel Incidental Discharge Act — pushes operators toward low-sulfur fuel and, increasingly, LNG propulsion. The Maritime Administration (MARAD) runs U.S.-flag support programs (cargo preference, the Maritime Security Program stipend, Title XI loan guarantees).

Decarbonization is the one regulatory theme that hits all four children at once: IMO carbon rules will force expensive fleet renewal — alternative fuels, retrofits, scrapping of older tonnage — with uncertain payback, and larger operators able to fund compliance stand to benefit relative to small owners.

8. Consolidation

Consolidation looks completely different in each child, which is why the level's blended concentration figures are close to meaningless.

The level HHI of 1,081.5 (CR4 56.4%) is a misleading average.[2] It sits just inside the "moderately concentrated" range under the 2023 federal merger guidelines, but it blends four unlike markets:

(HHI for 483114 is withheld in the source data; no value is stated here.)

The takeaways: ocean cruise is a completed roll-up — decades of mergers (Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian each a house of brands) produced one of the economy's most concentrated industries, now constrained mainly by shipyard capacity (only three European yards build most cruise ships).[12] Domestic freight is mid-consolidation — public Jones Act operators fell from eight to two, and private/family holding companies keep rolling up scarce compliant tonnage.[9][18] Domestic passenger is fragmenting-then-consolidating in pockets, via private-equity roll-ups of ferry and excursion brands. International freight is two worlds: a container-liner oligopoly (alliances plus MSC control 80%+ of box capacity) alongside a fragmented tanker/bulk sector of hundreds of owners.[10] A larger operator in any of these can still destroy returns by over-ordering ships near the top of the cycle.

9. Risks

• Cyclicality and overcapacity — the central risk in three of the four children. Freight rates and cruise yields can fall hard when newbuild deliveries outrun demand; leveraged owners can be wiped out. (Ferries are the exception: essential ridership is steady.)
• Balance-sheet leverage — vessels are debt-financed across the level; the cruise majors carried a mountain of COVID-era debt they are still working down, and highly leveraged freight owners are fragile in downturns.
• Fuel and decarbonization capex — bunker-price spikes hit spot earnings, and IMO carbon rules force expensive fleet renewal on every child.
• Policy risk — the Jones Act (483113), the PVSA (483114) and the Section 883 tax exemption (483112) each underpin a child's economics; erosion of any would reprice that business. This risk is two-edged for incumbents.
• Geopolitics and chokepoints — sanctions, war-risk, and Red Sea / Panama Canal disruptions reroute trade and can spike or strand rates overnight (mostly 483111/483112).
• Government-budget and grant dependence — the domestic-passenger child lives on public appropriations and federal grants; budget failures delay fleet renewal (483114).
• Fleet aging, shipyard scarcity and crew shortages — few U.S. yards build Jones Act or U.S.-flag passenger ships, and a licensed-mariner shortage caps how fast domestic operators can grow.
• Undercount and private-market opacity — much of the real activity is foreign-flagged, foreign-incorporated, privately held or governmental, so public data and disclosure are thin; benchmarking and valuation are harder than in most industries.

10. How to invest & outlook

Match the route to the child — there is no single "shipping" trade here.

• Ocean cruise (483112) — the deepest public access. Carnival (CCL/CUK), Royal Caribbean (RCL), Norwegian (NCLH), Viking (VIK), Lindblad (LIND), plus indirect Disney (DIS)/TUI. Judge them on bookings, net yield, occupancy, onboard revenue, cost per berth-day, debt maturities and cash flow after maintenance capex — not headline revenue.
• International freight (483111) — cyclical trades. Separate the sub-types: tankers (INSW, STNG, FRO), dry bulk (SBLK, GNK), gas (Dorian LPG), lessors/global liners (GSL, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, ZIM), or a shipping ETF. Watch the spot-vs-time-charter spread, the newbuild orderbook as a share of the fleet, and scrapping.
• Domestic freight (483113) — one listed franchise, then private. Matson (MATX) for the protected Jones Act core; Kirby (KEX) for partial coastal exposure; Algoma (ALC) for the Great Lakes; otherwise private equity, family/holding-company stakes, vessel-leasing platforms, or MARAD-backed debt.
• Domestic passenger (483114) — no clean public route. Only diluted slivers via NCLH/VIK/LIND; the real routes are private ferry/small-cruise ownership, municipal bonds that fund public systems, and the "picks-and-shovels" shipyards building the renewal wave.

Cross-cutting discipline: compare names on normalized, through-cycle cash flow (enterprise value to normalized EBITDA, free-cash-flow yield, net asset value, charter/contract coverage, fleet age, orderbook growth). Dividend yields and price multiples are especially unreliable when freight rates or cruise yields are unusually high or low.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). The four children are not aligned. Ocean cruise enters 2026 with the strongest setup — record demand, occupancy above 100%, disciplined shipyard-capped supply — tempered by leverage and Section 883 tax risk. Coastal freight splits: the coastal-tanker corner is the tightest, most-contracted market in the level, while the Great Lakes are soft on weak steel. International freight stays cyclical, currently supported by elevated ton-miles from rerouting (a bearish risk if trade normalizes) and by proposed U.S.-flag revival legislation (the SHIPS for America Act) that could be a structural tailwind if enacted.[17] Domestic passenger faces up-demand (a Great Lakes cruise upcycle, ferry-fleet renewal grants) throttled by shipyard capacity, mariner shortages and strained public budgets.

Bottom line. NAICS 48311 is strategically indispensable — the physical backbone of U.S. trade, tourism and island life — but it is four different investments wearing one code. The best long-term positions tend to be operators with disciplined fleet growth, manageable debt, contract or franchise visibility, and credible decarbonization plans; the most fragile are highly leveraged owners betting on peak spot rates, aggressive vessel-value assumptions, or a single policy or geopolitical shock. Pick the child before you pick the trade.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau. County Business Patterns (NAICS 48311 and children), 2023 — establishments, employment, payroll (and nonemployer/coverage caveat). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp.html
2. U.S. Census Bureau. 2022 Economic Census — Concentration of Largest Firms (NAICS 48311 and children) — receipts, firm count, CR4/CR8/CR20/CR50, HHI. https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN
3. U.S. Small Business Administration. Table of Small Business Size Standards (NAICS 4831 series), 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. U.S. Census Bureau / NAICS. NAICS 48311 Deep Sea, Coastal, and Great Lakes Water Transportation — definition and child boundaries (483111/483112/483113/483114), 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=48311&year=2022
5. UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Review of Maritime Transport 2024/2025 — seaborne share of trade, ton-miles, fuel transition, IMO carbon strategy. https://unctad.org/publication/review-maritime-transport-2025
6. U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Jones Act & The Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA; 46 U.S.C. §55103). https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1004?language=en_US
7. Congressional Research Service. Shipping Under the Jones Act: Legislative and Regulatory Background, R45725. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45725
8. American Institute for Economic Research. What Is the Jones Act — and Can It Be Fixed? (U.S.-flag operating and build-cost premiums). https://www.aier.org/article/what-is-the-jones-act-and-can-it-be-fixed/
9. Seatrade Maritime. Public-listed Jones Act companies — an endangered species (eight in 2008 to two). https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/shipping-finance/public-listed-jones-act-companies-an-endangered-species
10. Container News / InvestSnips. Shipping alliances and MSC control over 80% of container market, 2025; publicly traded tanker & dry-bulk companies and flags of registry. https://container-news.com/shipping-alliances-msc-global-market-share-2025/
11. Matson, Inc. Q4 & Full-Year 2025 Results; 2026 Outlook and FY2025 Form 10-K (Jones Act share of Ocean Transportation revenue; China lane; logistics). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/matson-inc-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-results-provides-2026-outlook-302695334.html
12. Carnival Corporation & plc / Royal Caribbean Group / Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings / MSC Group. FY2025 results and 10-Ks; cruise-line ownership guide (Carnival FY2025 revenue $26.6B; concentration; foreign incorporation; Section 883; shipyard cap). https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/carnival-corporation--plc-achieves-record-full-year-adjusted-net-income-and-investment-grade-leverage-metrics-reinstates-dividend-302646558.html
13. Company investor filings — International Seaways, Scorpio Tankers, Frontline, Star Bulk, Genco, Dorian LPG, Global Ship Lease, Kirby, Algoma Central, Viking, Lindblad. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar
14. U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. National Census of Ferry Operators (≈105.8M ferry passengers); CLIA/American Cruise Lines/Great Lakes cruise sources. https://www.bts.gov/ncfo
15. Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). State of the Cruise Industry Report 2026 (37.2M passengers; economic impact; demographics). https://cruising.org/resources/state-cruise-industry-report-2026
16. Federal Maritime Commission. Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2022 Implementation. https://www.fmc.gov/ocean-shipping-reform-act-of-2022-implementation/
17. U.S. Congress. SHIPS for America Act of 2025 (S.1541); Strategic Commercial Fleet. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text
18. gCaptain / Saltchuk. Saltchuk Completes Acquisition of Overseas Shipholding Group for $950 Million (2024); Crowley, Pasha, Interlake (private operators). https://gcaptain.com/saltchuk-completes-acquisition-of-overseas-shipholding-group-for-950-million/
19. International Maritime Organization. EEXI, CII and 2023 Greenhouse Gas Strategy; SOLAS/MARPOL. https://www.imo.org/en/mediacentre/hottopics/pages/eexi-cii-faq.aspx
20. U.S. DOT Maritime Administration (MARAD). U.S.-Flag Fleet Dashboard; Maritime Security Program; Title XI. https://www.maritime.dot.gov/data-reports/us-flag-fleet-dashboard
21. Lake Carriers' Association. Cargo Reports — Year-in-Review 2024/2025 (U.S.-Flag Great Lakes Vessels). https://lcaships.com/cargo-reports-year-in-review-2024-u-s-flag-vessels/
22. U.S. Department of Justice & FTC. 2023 Merger Guidelines (HHI concentration thresholds). https://www.justice.gov/atr/2023-merger-guidelines